Jimmy Buffett sings that life is “more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party,” but that didn’t stop him from surprising an audience over the holiday weekend.
The singer-songwriter made an impromptu appearance Sunday afternoon at Sunset Cove, a waterfront bar in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, bringing the crowd to its feet screaming when he walked out.
A video of the concert posted to Facebook shows Mac McAnally, the advertised headliner for the show and longtime member of the Coral Reefer Band, singing “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” and when he gets to the lyric “At a moment like this, I can’t help but wonder what would Jimmy Buffett do,” Buffett himself showed up with an answer.
“How ‘bout I play it for you,” he said, picking up a guitar. At the end of the song, Buffett told his cheering fans, “Well, it is good to see an audience, let me tell you that.”
In May, Buffett was hospitalized in Boston for an unspecified medical issue and canceled a concert in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I still can’t believe it happened,” said Andre Arsenault, who posted the video and plays at Sunset Cove on Sundays. “I started to record “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” on my phone because I love the song” and it’s the name of Arsenault’s boat. “All of a sudden, the people in front of me jumped up so I couldn’t see anything, and when I stood up, Jimmy was right there.”
Buffett went on to play for about 45 minutes, according to Arsenault.
How Jimmy Buffett pulled off his surprise show with Mac McAnally
So how did the surprise performance happen?
A few hours before the show, McAnally told Sunset Cove owner Mike MacFarlane that Buffett wanted to “crash the party,” MacFarlane said. After being “under the weather” and off the road, Buffett was “itching to get back on the road,” MacFarlane said.
So Buffett hopped on a flight from Long Island with his daughter, and MacFarlane, whose 50th birthday happened to be the day of the show, met him at the airport.
“Nobody had a clue,” MacFarlane said. “I didn’t want a surprise party for my birthday, but in reality, I did have one. The surprise was just for everyone else.”
Buffett played a half-dozen songs, including “A Pirate Looks at Forty” – which he changed to 50 in a nod to MacFarlane’s big birthday.
“You can’t write a check for what happened,” MacFarlane said. “It’s a full moon tonight, and the stars aligned yesterday.”
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